Blowback

It wasn’t until the final stages of the project that Dr. Bashir floated a terrifying supposition about what they might be working on. Before they could fully discuss the possibility, the team was officially disbanded. Only Emir was kept on at the institute to assemble the team’s research. Immediately thereafter, team members began dying. But why?

Alone in his lab in Baghdad, Dr. Bashir had come up with the correct answer. Each of the team members had been recruited to help give birth to an abomination. It was the only thing that made sense, but Emir Tokay had no intention of continuing to be a party to it. The type of Islam he believed in would never allow what the institute planned to unleash on the world. It was pure evil, and Islam was a religion of peace. He wouldn’t allow any more fanatics to hijack his faith for their own vile ends.

The one problem he had was that he couldn’t prove anything if he was dead. He needed to get back to Turkey and the safety of his family. The airport was out of the question, as was the train station. They were too dangerous, too obvious. If he could catch a bus south to the port city of Narayanganj, he could board a ship and everything would be okay. But, before he did that, there was one last thing he needed to do at the institute.

After sending off a final e-mail and gathering his files from his office, Emir wound his way through the bustling old town and emerged on one of the crowded streets parallel to the Dhaleswari River. When he saw his bus coming, he allowed himself to believe that he just might make it.

His thoughts were soon interrupted by a speeding black Mercedes that screamed to a halt alongside him, filling the air with the smell of burnt rubber and tire smoke. When three masked men armed with AK-74s leapt from the car and surrounded him, he knew he had been a fool to think he could ever make it out of Bangladesh alive.

SIX

WASHINGTON, DC

Pennsylvania Democratic senator Helen Remington Carmichael watched the footage for the thousandth time, and it still gave her the chills. It wasn’t that she abhorred violence. On the contrary, she saw the calculated application of force for exactly what it was-a necessary means to preserve liberty. In this case, though, what the images on her television screen represented, what the footage millions of Americans were seeing repeatedly on Fox and CNN and Muslims around the world were watching on their respective channels, was the beginning of the undoing of American President Jack Rutledge.

She had known it was only a matter of time. The man’s approval ratings had been ridiculously high. It started with sympathy over the loss of his wife to breast cancer during the first campaign, then it followed him through his first term as president with his kidnapping, his dismantling of several high-profile terrorist organizations, and most recently a successful showdown against the Russians. It had seemed as if the man could do no wrong. And then this. The heavens had opened, and God had handed Helen Remington Carmichael the one thing she had been praying for since considering a run for the vice-presidential slot on the Democratic ticket.

One step at a time, she had told herself. She knew how the press perceived her. She was the power-hungry bitch who had used her successful husband to catapult her into a Senate seat. She didn’t even like Pennsylvania, but when it became obvious that aging senator Timothy Murphy wasn’t going to run again, she had grabbed her husband by the balls and had moved the entire family out east to establish residency and make a run for the Senate.

The people of the state liked her fire, and Murphy had thrown not only his endorsement but all of his political weight behind her. The young Republican the GOP put up against her never had a chance.

Ever the savvy politico, Carmichael had been working hard to soften her image, but no matter what she did, everything about her still screamed bitch. While some of her aides privately debated whether or not she should ditch the pantsuits and grow her hair out, there were others who said none of it would matter. No matter how you dressed or coiffed her, the woman not only acted like a bitch, she just plain looked like one.

The word among her staff was that maybe all she needed to soften her up was a little sex, but her husband was too busy chasing other women.

The fact of the matter was that the only way Carmichael was going to get elected to the presidency of the United States was to serve as one hell of a vice president first.

But to even get that far, there was something very serious standing in her way-Jack Rutledge. The Democrats didn’t have a single candidate they could stand up against him and hope to win with. The only way they were going to win was to politically batter the incumbent president until his numbers were so low they could walk in and take the office right away from him.

SEVEN

THE WHITE HOUSE